Kyoto Protocol

It is easy to be cynical about the eleven-day Third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, that has just concluded at Kyoto, Japan. It was as if a mountain had gone into labour for a full 264 hours and finally given birth to a mouse. Of course, some consolation could be drawn from the fact that at least a mouse was produced after all that effort, as the US, the European Union and Japan committed themselves to cuts of seven, eight and six percent in the 1990 levels of six greenhouse gases (GHGs). They have undertaken to do this over the next 15 years. This is considerably less than the 15 per cent cut by the year 2012 that the European Union was lobbying for. As its delegate pronounced at the end of this global talk show, the final commitments that emerged were not good enough for the future. And she was right. It was not good enough.

While the US, the biggest polluter, which accounts for at least a quarter of the world’s total emissions, seemed to have climbed down from its earlier stand of stabilising its emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2008-2012, it gained two major advantages for itself. First, it got to expand the number of GHGs that come under the purview of the Kyoto Protocol — that is, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride were added to the earlier list of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and methane. Second, it got to ensure that the right to emissions trading was included in the final treaty. This is a major loophole, as there are fears that the rich nations of the world can dodge cuts in emissions by buying pollution entitlements from poorer nations. Since most of the discussions were focused on emission cuts, a related aspect — the transfer of clean technology from the developed to the developing world — also seems to have got underplayed. This is unfortunate, considering that obsolete, inefficient technology is at least partly responsible for the emission levels in these regions.

Perhaps the summit’s greatest achievement was its eloquent reiteration that global warming is not just a figment of a sci-fi writer’s imagination, but a painfully real problem. The fact that at current emission levels of GHGs, average global temperatures are poised to rise by 1 to 3.5 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years is bad news for Planet Earth. It could lead to fiercer storms, the melting of the polar ice caps and rising sea levels. While developing countries are twice, and small island states thrice as vulnerable to global warming as are developed countries, no country under the overarching sky can believe that it is immune to the consequences of such a phenomenon. For countries like India, if it behaves with rational caution, a potential disaster could prove to be an opportunity. An opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others and choose a developmental trajectory that, while being economically progressive, is ecologically sustainable. Therefore, while the developing nations of the world were right to have placed the onus of cleaning up a polluted planet firmly on the developed nations at Kyoto, it certainly does not mean that they should be blind to the very real dangers of climate change.